Loving

Dec 12 - 15 Rhinebeck

Mon

12/12

Tue

12/13

Wed

12/14

Thur

12/15

8:15

8:15

2:305:20

5:20

*Academy Award nominee – Best Actress
This tender, graceful film from director Jeff Nichols (Mud, Take Shelter) tells the story of Richard and Mildred Loving (Joel Edgerton and Ruth Negga), an interracial couple who were arrested in 1958 for the crime of getting married. Born and raised in the hills of Central Point, Virginia, the Lovings spent nine years fighting for the right to live as a family in their home state. Their commitment to each other ended up changing the country when it sparked the landmark 1967 Supreme Court ruling, Loving v. Virginia, that unanimously struck down all anti-miscegenation laws and declared marriage an inherent right.
From their body language as they sit around a campfire at a party, it’s clear that Richard and Mildred are utterly at home with each other and within their community, a poor town of farmers and laborers that’s sufficiently integrated for their relationship not to cause a major stir. But the same can’t be said of local officials, who, upon learning of the couple’s marriage in Washington, D.C., rouse them from their bed in the middle of the night, throw them in jail, and later order them out of the state for 25 years. After trying to live a cramped existence in D.C., the couple takes their life in their own hands when they return illegally to Virginia to live in a clandestine farm house with fingers crossed that their lawyers will help their union become legal someday. Just as the real-life Lovings chose not to attend their own Supreme Court hearing, Nichols shows their courage by focusing on their domestic lives rather than on the rehearsed speeches of the courtroom. It is through their faces and their intimate, telling gestures — arms draped around one another, a head laid on a shoulder, small courtesies and shared sacrifices — that we come to know the understated power of the couple’s union. Taciturn but vulnerable, Joel Edgerton transmits both ferocious love and righteous outrage as Richard. And Ruth Negga’s performance as Mildred is nothing less than a revelation, conveying turbulent emotions with a glance. With its soft-spoken protagonists and its richly American rural landscapes, Nichols’ film is exquisite and deep in its truths.